Star Wars Battlefront Review: Torn Between The Light and Dark Side of the Force.

Everything wrong with Star Wars Battlefront can be summed up by what publisher's logo is right under the title.

Developer: EA DICE
Publishers: Electronic Arts
Versions: PS4(reviewed), Xbox One, and PC
Price: $59.99 plus $49.99 Season Pass
Release Date: November 17th, 2015

Star Wars is an extremely important part of my life. My parents were huge Star Wars fans and did everything in their power to make sure that me and my sister were as well. I've watched the original films and the special editions more times that I can count, my family and I were at the midnight launch of all three prequel films, me and my sister got tickets for the new Star Wars film the second they became available, and everyone in my family was completely obsessed about the Star Wars expanded universe. In spite of being a huge Star Wars fan I never played any of the original Star Wars Battlefront games. They were just never my kind of games. I was more into the Star Wars RPGs and Podracer games than anything else. So I'm going into uncharted territory with this new game. I want to tell you that Star Wars Battlefront is a fantastic game, but sadly, while it is indeed a very good game, it is denied true greatness by the immense greed of its publisher Electronic Arts.

Star Wars Battlefront is the best looking game on consoles out right now!

Let's start with the good. Aesthetically, Star Wars Battlefront is a prefect representation of the original Star Wars trilogy. You can tell just by looking at this game that the people at DICE absolutely love Star Wars. The three playable hero characters that you can play as in certain modes such as Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are also lovingly designed, though they suffer a bit by not being voiced by their original actors. There are also a deserve set of modes that range from traditional 20 player deathmatches to massive 40 player events that have one team doing incredible feats such as taking out massive AT-AT walkers while the other team tries to stop them. The aerial dog fights in X-Wings and Tie Fighters are also a wonder to behold and a joy to play. While the game is focused on online play more than anything, there are a few offline modes that are a blast to play as well.

Dogfights are a lot of fun though there aren't any space battles sadly.

On the technical side of things Star Wars Battlefront is my new benchmark for First Person Shooter games on consoles. The game ran at a smooth 60fps with no frame drops during any of my sessions and still manages to look absolutely gorgeous. Star Wars Battlefront is proof that 60fps is not some insane impossibility that requires massive amounts of work. Matchmaking for online matches is also the fastest and smoothest I have every seen in any multiplayer shooter to date. This is especially amazing because I played off of my crappy DSL server in the middle of nowhere and the game still ran like an absolute dream at least when no one else in my home was doing anything else on the internet. I'm also insanely grateful that in an age where multiplayer shooters liter themselves with intrusive microtranactions, which is something that Electronic Art's itself is guilty of in the past, I'm glad to say that they are nowhere to be found in this game.

Star Wars Battlefront offers lots of player customization without resorting to any kind of microtransactions.

However, despite all of the positive things I have said about Star Wars Battlefront and the massive amounts of fun I have been having with it, there is one big elephant in the room that just sours the whole experience. One of the major issues that I have with the game is while all the content that is here is of very high quality there just isn't all that much of it right now. There all only 16 maps and you will undoubtedly see all of them multiple times after playing all of the different modes. There are also on six hero character to play in the current build of the game and it feels like a very small number considering all of the amazing characters in the Star Wars universe. Now if Electronic Arts was planning to update the game periodicly with free content like Nintendo's multiplayer shooter Spatoon I wouldn't have much of an issue with this lack of base game content. But, I have a sneaking suspicion that Electronic Arts made sure that the base game was deliberately lacking in content so they could justify the $50 season pass that grants access to the game's 4 planned expansions. This is an extremely greedy and underhanded tactic, but because it's Electronic Arts, a company with a reputation with buying popular game franchises and then proceeding to run them into the ground with bad business practices and short sighted greed, this isn't particularly surprising.

The amount is DLC that EA has planned for this game is just plain greedy.

I wanted to sing the praises of this game. It isn't a Battlefield clone like many feared it would be. It's its own thing and it plays like an absolute dream, but the lack of content and the obvious ploy to milk consumers for more money is just sleazy. If you really want to get Star Wars Battlefront I can't say if not worth your time because it most certainly is, but be ready to hand over a fair bit of money if you want to stick with this game in the long term. The greed that Electronic Arts has displayed here with Battlefront makes me fear for the other Star Wars games they have in production. This is the same company that ruined the ending of Mass Effect 3 and forever doomed almost all conversations about that game to be about it's awful original ending. I'd recommend waiting for a game of the year release containing all of the planned DLC. I don't want to support the practice of season passes even if it's for games that I like.